


Extinction of the Tiger

by AustralianSpy



Series: Tales de Jim Moriarty [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Explicit Language, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AustralianSpy/pseuds/AustralianSpy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's a boss without his sniper?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Extinction of the Tiger

It’s been some time, since it happened. There was no funeral. He was buried without ceremony. I visited once. I won’t return. I wonder if I’d have sent him out on that job, still, if I’d known? It’s not my place to be sentimental, though. Never has been; never will be. I won’t be crying over his tombstone. But it’ll always be there: his absence. That palpable nothing in the space he used to occupy.

It’s almost shocking, all the little signs I missed along the way. Up until the day he took a bullet to the skull. How unlike me. The master manipulator, not noticing even for a second that an outside force was manipulating _me_. It’s so absurd, it hurts. _Hurts_. That in itself is infinitely more absurd. If he was still alive, I’d kill him myself, for it.

When did my existence become so intertwined with his? Dependent on it? When did ‘he and I’ cease to be? When did ‘us’ take it’s place? When did we reach the point that I was unable to function without his presence? Without him at my shoulder? At my side? At my bedroom door, calling in to ask if I was alright? When did I become this hideously laughable thing that can’t remember how to make breakfast because I don’t have him to do it for me, or to make it for? When did I forget how to do even the most rudimentary of chores, because I haven’t got him to perform them in my place?

I remember every instance in which a person questioned ‘us’. Two hundred forty-seven times. They wanted to know why. Why _he_ lived with me. Why _he_ was my right-hand man. Why _he_ accompanied me nearly everywhere. Why _he_ had been in my employment longer than any other. My answer had been simple: because he’s the best. What I hadn’t realized or understood was the tragedy in that answer. It wasn’t nearly as simple as I made it out to be. He _was_ the best, of course. But not merely in the way I implied; not merely because of his proficiency behind the scope of a rifle.

God, listen to me. Prattling on about him. Why? Not because he’s the best at putting a bullet through a man’s eye-socket at a distance of two-thousand meters, that’s for certain. He’s made me ill, he has. Day after he’d gone, I’d entered his room. Carved his name into his wall. SEBASTIAN MORAN in huge, garish letters. A permanent reminder that he’d ever existed. Physical, when the memories of a madman were the only other thing left to prove he’d lived. Then I’d walked out, closed the door, and locked it. If only I could close the door on everything else involving him, the way I’d done then. It’d be so much _simpler_.

But no. I can’t. Not now, when it’s just dawned on me how much I’d overlooked. _Me. Overlooked._ How ill he truly made me. Damn him.

One of the first things I never noticed was the laughter. Mine. His. He managed to entice _me_ into laughing. Not to say that I never laughed, but by God he’d worm it out of me at least twice a day, if he could. And then he’d grin like a damned fool each time, like he knew full well just what he’d accomplished. He may have been more of a devil than I. And the sound of it — his laughter — I don’t think I ever quite realized how much I liked it. I don’t inspire laughter in most, after all. I’m the villain. A criminal. It isn’t my _job_ to be funny; quite the contrary, in most cases. But the delighted tones of his voice echoing throughout the room... Now that I’ll never hear them again, now that there is only silence, I’ve realized the sound rivaled that of even of my favorite compositions. Here was someone who delighted in my interests. I suppose I’ll just have to do without, now.

It’s more lonely, now, I think. Well... not lonely. What a _pitiful_ state to be in; to feel. But alone. That’s more appropriate a term for it, I think. I’m more alone. When he was alive, I might be alone while I’d sent him off on a job, but it was a more companionable aloneness. It was less alone than it should’ve been. Because there was the promise that he’d be returning home. There’s no promise, now.

I never recognized quite how much he cared. I knew, of course. What with how much he clucked over me like a mother hen, and fretted day in and day out about my well-being. I’d have to be a complete imbecile to miss all of that. But the extent to which it permeated my life? I’ve practically deteriorated to nothing without him hovering over my shoulder, making me eat, coaxing me to sleep with his trickery, constantly checking in on me. I’ll re-learn how to live, of course. I’m an adaptable creature, that way. But any night I actually spend trying to sleep — and failing miserably — I keep expecting to hear him open the door, or turn on a light, or any other number of silly things he did at those hours. He thought I never noticed how he’d slip into bed with me, on occasion, when my rest was... fitful, at best. He’d leave just before the hour I’d normally rise, to avoid my waking with him next to me. What he seemed to fail to realize was that I didn’t _sleep through the night_. I’d wake once or twice, and it was nearly impossible not to recognize there was another body sharing the space with me.

He was rather like that all around. Thinking himself supremely crafty in his care-taking of me. And I suppose he was, some of the time. But not nearly as often as he thought. Now there’s no one to attempt to ‘trick’ me into doing domestic tasks, so they rarely get done.

My home has never been so silent as it is now. The place is like an empty shell, once at least marginally alive, and now inhabited by only one soulless creature. Even when he’d try to be quiet, he’d make a racket. So there was always something. Him bumping about or singing horrendously or generally making a mess that he _of course_ wouldn’t clean up. Now _I_ make the messes, and pretend it was him and I scold the air like a fecking idiot. He’s not there. _I’m_ barely there.

What to do?

Burning his things would be satisfying. And far more permanent than simply locking his door and pretending I couldn’t get back inside if I _really_ wanted to. It’d be awfully ceremonious and romantic, as well, and remove the temptation to go sit amongst his belongings.

I do wonder, though, how long it will take me to forget precisely how his voice sounded. Exactly the way his mouth curved when he smiled. Absolutely how he would’ve reacted to something I’d done. After I’ve erased every trace of him, there’ll be only a faceless name carved into a wall. Letters without meaning as my memories fade, as they do. Until all I remember is that he existed, once, but as a thing without detail or substance that can be recalled.

It’d be so much better that way. Start anew. Remove this tainted smudge he’s left on my existence. Bloody man; tiger; bastard. It’s better that I stand alone.

Damn him. Damn it all.

The King stands alone.


End file.
